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Things that suck.

I wanted to do a post on the best and worst things on parenting (so far)… Fiona is 2 months old today and I can officially say that today there are way more awesome things than sucky things. I’m not quite sure where the tipping point was, but I think maybe somewhere between 4-6 weeks… and it just keeps getting better. But I’m all about truth in blogging so I feel I should share the suck too (also so I remember when the inevitable baby fever strikes and I need to remind myself why MAYBE having just one perfect baby is enough). And since I’m all about ending on a high note, I’ll share the suck first.

Top 10 sucky things about parenting:

10) Waking to feed in the first month. We were blessed with a great sleeper and for that I am eternally grateful. But having to set an alarm for every 3rd hour of the night and then piss my kid off to feed her when all she wants to do was sleep? Suck.

9) Revolving door of guests. I might be in the minority here (although I don’t think so), and I acknowledge that we had some extenuating circumstances (see below re: healing and feeding)… but having guests in and out of our house so much the first 4 weeks of Fiona’s life stressed me the hell out. I thought I was protecting us by not allowing any overnight visitors the first week we were home… but that was not enough honestly. If I ever have another kid, unpopular as it might be, I think that I will have a “grandparents only” visitors rule for anything more than a quick (by which I mean– 1 hour tops) pop-in. And even for grandparents, 3 night max at a time (except my mom honestly– because when you’re having a hard time sometimes you need your mom. Even if you’re almost 30. And I don’t care if it isn’t fair, it’s what I need).

8) Unpredictable schedule. Maybe your kid slept great last night, but who knows what they’ll do tonight. Maybe they just went down for a nap, but do you have 10 minutes or an hour? Do I have time to shower? Can I wash bottles (not being able to hear if she’d cry because the water is running) or will she wake up before I’m done? When should we eat when she’ll be okay enough that we can possibly eat together…? And speaking of…

7) Not eating with two hands. For the first month of Fiona’s life (except when my mom visited) I don’t think B and I ever ate a meal together where we both got to use two hands. Inevitably she’d freak out right before dinner and we’d have to take turns holding her.

6) Crying you can’t stop. The older Fiona gets, the more she only cries when there is a problem. But that was not always the case. Sometimes babies cry and you can’t figure out why and you can’t stop them and it just sucks. You think you now how much it sucks before you have a kid– because you can imagine… having a crying kid sucks right? But you have no idea until it is YOUR kid and you feel incompetent because they are screaming and you have tried everything and what worked last night isn’t working tonight and omg take this kid before I lose my damn mind.

5) Not being able to go out anymore. I mean… I guess we COULD. But we’re scared. B and I have spent our lives being annoyed by crying babies in public. We were always all… omg why would you bring a kid here? Keep that kid at home! And now that we have a kid, we don’t want to be those parents that inflict our crying kid on the world. Not that she cries that much anymore, but I imagine karma will bite us in the ass the first time we try to take her to a restaurant and she’ll scream the whole time. Other than the grocery store or target or the doctor… we haven’t yet taken Fiona anywhere really. Which means we’ve not gone anywhere really. We haven’t eaten in a restaurant together in over 2 months… how crazy is that? (I actually never ate a meal outside of our home until last weekend… wow).

4) Lack of time together. Because I was up so much at night, I wanted to go to bed when Fiona did to maximize my sleep. Which meant B and I had basically zero alone time for 2 months. This is the first week we’ve tried putting her down and coming back downstairs for 30-60 minutes before we head to bed. Already I can tell that just that small amount of alone time every day is making such a difference in our happiness.

3) Speaking of B– his schedule. I’m grateful for his job, and I definitely want him to finish school. He’s doing everything right… but it sucks. I’m alone all day 5 days/week. And 2 nights/week he is in class until after bed time so I’m on my own from wakeup until bed. And then he has group work for his class 1-2x/week as well. So I’m home alone with a baby A LOT. And I love her and it’s actually fun hanging with her a lot of the time now… but that is an awful lot of time to be alone with a baby, especially because of….

2) Healing issues! I had a c section. I’ll write more about that, but for now let’s just say… RECOVERY SUCKS. Especially when you’re home alone. And also…

1) Feeding issues! This will also be a separate post, but has been by FAR our biggest challenge in taking care of Fiona. I have shed more tears over trying to get this little girl fed than I have about anything else in my entire life. Including a rather epic breakup I had in college. When you have trouble feeding your kid, there is nothing worse. They are so tiny and you just want them to be healthy, and when you can’t figure out how to make that happen, it is wholly heartbreaking. And at 2 months, we have still not quite worked this out. I think we may be on our way to a solution, and I can’t even express how excited I’ll be to not have every feeding session be such a struggle!

And this got long… so stay tuned for my next post of things that are awesome!